Problem is the big picture. See, the Attorney General of PA’s two brothers, father, uncles, four cousins and the guy from the Wal Mart who plows out her driveway all played for Joe Paterno.
I’m just saying. Things are rather tightly wound up in the Happy Valley.
FTR I am about a conservative(or at least politically incorrect) as they come (at least in relation to most folks about most things on this board). Also, I am about the last person to jump on the OMG, look out for the pedophiles! bandwagon and think most of it and a significant fraction of date rape/drunk is no excuse is a crock. And yet, even to me, this whole thing stinks to high heaven. I guess its possible Paterno will come up with an excuse that flies and the facts will back him up, but for now to me its looking pretty damn bad. I suspect at best things will be shown to be pretty bad, but not just the OMG bad they currently appear to be.
bill, I think the odds of it being more OMG bad, as opposed to any less, are much higher. Think about it – the criticism of Paterno is based in large part on his own sworn admissions. Let’s say that someone or some video tape comes forward that proves McQuery, the janitor(s), or the victims (also sworn) testimony was perjured, wrong, mis-remembered (there’s not been the slightest suggestion of this, nor a single eyewitness who contradicts any of the other witnesses implicating Sandusky, mind you). Even so Paterno (who couldn’t have known, and shouldn’t have just assumed, the hypothetical/counterfactual innocence of Sandusky) morally needed to do more than what he did.
As some have said, unless all the eyewitnesses were (a) wrong or (b) lying, this isn’t really one of those “innocent till proven guilty,” “let’s see what shakes out, it may not be as bad as it sounds” situations. Really, it can only plausibly be worse than it sounds (I predict before it’s all over, at least one or two additional victims, possibly even one of Sandusky’s foster children (ewww), will have come forward, and maybe one or two more aspects of the cover-up or non-feasance by PSU officials will have been unveiled.).
Some stories you hear, process, and just say “that shit totally happened,” and this is one of them. It’s like reading the harassment complaint against Bill O’Reilly: when I got to the point where the complaint recited that in one of his phone sex sessions, O’Reilly was reported to have said “I’d get you down to the Caribbean, then I’d get a couple of daquiris into you – that’s pretty much their modus operandi down there” – I said to myself – “that shit totally happened AND she has it on tape.”
Actually what he’s doing is no different from the posters in this thread who claim I’m defending Paterno due to his politics.
When all this started I had no idea of Paterno’s political inclinations. I’ve been defending him primarily for three reasons: one, we don’t know exactly what he was told, how serious it appeared or how unlikely, and we don’t know how much credence he gave it. Two, jumping to conclusions about someone’s guilt and behaving as though they are the scum of the earth when you don’t know all the facts is exactly what Nancy Grace does, and since the general consences around here is that it’s wrong for her to that, it should also be wrong for posters here to do it. And three, the hysteria going on with regard to Paterno and the entirety of Penn State University itself, apart from the handful of administrators who are culpable, is responsible for the ridiculous hysteria regarding pedophilia that has been going on in this country that has resulted in such lunacy as adolescent girls being charged for distributing child porn and having to register as a sex offender simply for taking a nude photo of themselves on a cell phone and emailing it to a friend, who for all I know could be charged for receiving it as well.
Child porn and child rape are serious issues and when engaged in by adults they should be punished just as seriously, but as it is now children are being brought up to fear men and a man can no compliment a child to its mother without without drawing suspicious glares. It’s ridiculous, and attitudes like the ones on display in thread are what lead to it. So knock it off and let the facts come out and the law and the courts determine what should be done and stop acting like a friggin mob of vigilantes.
Harumph!
Oh, IMO thats certainly possible too. I was just saying AT THE VERY best, given a bunch of improbable stuff, newly revealed facts, and plenty of giving of the benefit of doubt it still won’t be very good. And Bill Oreilly never even bothered to buy me any drinks 
You know what’s not ridiculous hysteria? Calling 911 when you see a grown man sodomizing a 10-year-old boy.
The facts have come out. In the form of sworn testimony that the grand jury found plausible enough to justify an indictment.
And you continue to suggest that “sexual contact with a child” (which, at a minimum we KNOW Paterno heard about, because he swore to it) could ever be deemed meaningfully less serious, in terms of an appropriate follow up, than some OTHER more specific form of sexual behavior. “How serious it was”=100% freaking serious. Really, I wonder if something’s wrong with your thought process. “How much credence did he give?” That fucker KNEW it was true because the same S.O.B. had been (plausibly, accurately) accused of the same thing, years before, by a totally different witness.
Per the Philadelphia Fox affiliate, the number of Sandusky’s alleged victims has more than doubled and is now close to 20. I suspect there will be more.
Joe (and everyone else involved) should have taken it as seriously as they would if it was their own kid, especially after multiple reports from different people about different victims.
Did he also not get in the shower and soap up your back with that thing, whadda ya call it, a falafel?
Also from that complaint, also 100% guaranteed, lead pipe cinch self-authenticating proof that every word of the complaint was true and on tape verbatim.
Call me ghetto, but I don’t think my immediate thought upon seeing a child getting anally raped would have been to call 911. It would have been to render first aid.
And by “first aid”, I mean delivering a swift kick to the nuts of the guy doing the raping and getting the kid out of harm’s way. At the minimum he could have given away his presence by saying something.
It’s really sad that his first inclination was to run away, not to put all that muscle he had to some good, practical use for once in his life. Such a waste of testosterone.
Paterno calls his players his “kids”.
-shudder-
-puke-
Correct. And the fact that he didn’t makes me question, as I described last night, what he actually saw and how he relayed it to Joe Paterno.
It hasn’t been proven exactly what Paterno was told or how bad he thought it was, or whether he questioned in his own mind if it even happened at all, given what an unlikely scenario it was to begin with. As I said last night, it’s entirely possible for coaches to get crosswise and lie about each other.
And speaking of hysteria, yes, there is a hell of a lot of difference in various types of sexual contact with children. Certainly they are all wrong, but there’s a good deal more damage done, psychologically and physically, by anally raping a child as opposed to snapping illicit photos of them in the nude. Both are repulsive and both are child sex abuse, but to claim they are equivalent morally or in terms of damage to the child is ridiculous. It’s like claiming that knifing someone is as bad as slapping them. Both are assaults and both are crimes and both should be punished, but to say one is as bad as the other is nothing but hysteria.
I’m going to leave alone the notion that there is a form of sexual contact with a child (not photos, Paterno used the phrase “sexual contact with a minor”) that would militate for a different degree of investigation and follow uo than a report of “anal intercourse” because the notion is, frankly, angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin insane.
Coaches may be rivals and might spread tales. You don’t know much about college football, or organized sports, if you think an up and coming but wet behind the ears graduate assistant would ever have, or think he had, a plausible chance of bettering his career by badmouthing the guy who had been second-in-command and was still thick as thieves with the head guy. It’s not like McQuery could, what, take over the D coordinator job by slandering Sandusky, nor would that thought ever have crossed Paterno’s mind unless he was insane. I know all about office politics. The copy boy doesn’t try to trash the VP’s reputation unless he’s a nut case, and no one’s said (least of all Paterno) that McQuery was a nut case or that his report was not plausible on its face, or was not in fact believed to be true by them at the time.
And here’s another perfect example right here. Paterno calls his players his “kids”, therefore he’s clearly a perv. Are you really unaware that practically everybody in charge of young people calls them kids? Teachers do it, coaches do it, fast-food restaurant managers do it.
I know I’ve brought her up several times already but I’m beginning to see why Nancy Grace has been so successful. And it’s disgusting!
What the…I don’t… seriously, what? Maybe you could give us your rubric for appropriate levels of outrage for different types of offenses that could be committed by a naked 60-year-old man vs. a naked 10-year-old boy in a locker room.
Better yet, don’t. I’m close enough to losing my dinner already from reading this thread.
Continuing your theme of your own experience and knowledge being complete fucking gospel. Can’t have happened because the nobody else heard the kid scream which you know he would have. Can’t have happened because he didn’t call 911. Can’t have happened because you can’t imagine things happening that way.
So until we know absolutely everything about everything involving this case, it’s not fair to make any kind of judgement? When the fuck did your standard of evidence get so high?
You keep using these words. I do not think they mean what you think they mean.
Starving has a point. Not a great point, but a point.
Yes, there is an indictment. But lots of folks get indicted , then aquitted. People have been known to lie to Grand Juries, and proscutors have went gangbusters and tried cases in the media only to find that poor schlubs they bankrupted in the process didn’t do anything. Anybody remember McMartin Preschool?
Righteous indignation is fun and all. And yes, I think everyone involved have a LOT to answer for, including JoePa. But maybe can wait a* little *while before we hoist him from his…whatever we hoist people from.
Worst football program ever. Why they were ever let into the conference is beyond me.